Going with the flow

When I am in an "I CAN do anything, just watch me" mode, it is a thrilling challenge enlivened by a confident stepping out in faith, based on the ever faithful provision I have experienced all my life. But there comes a moment when my soul cries, "stop the world, I want to get off!" The dynamic flow of life sometimes moves at a leisurely trickle, sometimes a powerful rushing force. I am learning to accept the flow that carries me, removing barriers of fear, self-criticism, expectation and resistance. If I find such a barrier, it is usually caused by the idea that to take control I'll alleviate stress, but I find myself stuck or weighed down by it and it takes great effort to act. My soul's tendency is to go with the flow and receive what comes along, so it causes me stress to "maintain control" of a busy schedule. I have to be pretty demanding of myself to work within such confines of schedule, at a time that requires that I swim against the current. Value is placed on what I do, not who I am, the end product often valued over process. The buyer of my time often has little understanding of how much effort is involved in just giving up my control of that time, even if my use of it would seem very "unproductive." It is of course NOT unproductive, but the much needed "gestation" and unfolding, allowing enlightening truths...
"their own silent, undisturbed development, which like all progress, must come from deep within and cannot be forced or hastened. Everything is gestation and then birthing. To let each impression and each embryo of feeling come to completion, entirely in itself, in the dark, in the unsayable, the unconscious, beyond the reach of one's own understanding, and with deep humility and patience wait for the hour when a new clarity is born; this alone is what it means to live as an artist - in understanding as in creating.
In this there is no measuring with time, a year doesn't matter, and ten years are nothing. Being an artist means: not numbering and counting, but ripening like a tree, which doesn't force it's sap, and stands confidently in the storms of spring, not afraid that afterward summer may not come. It does come. But it comes only to those who are patient, who are there as if eternity lay before them, so unconcernedly silent and vast. I learn it everyday of my life, learn it with pain I am grateful for - patience is everything!" (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I am pushing too hard against that patience when I seek to fill my schedule now, to "buy time later." The key is to be aware and open even while busily moving, for who is to say when clarity will come? Being true, patient and gentle with oneself in any "storm of spring" is essential to peace.

Am I living true to the real desires of my heart? If yes, then I find gratitude, joy and peace in such providence of opportunity. If no, I discern what "needs" or aversions may have pulled my feet to some other path, and find my bearings again. No shame in it, just adjusting my heading and journeying on. In this realization, I may see the same familiar faces and things along the trail, but my eyes are seeing them in a new way, in a light of awareness that this life journey is a walk in freedom, where no barriers or mistakes remain because the true Way is established, and nothing can separate me from the One to whom I journey.